


Day 357 - The way of my people

by Anarion



Series: An almost gravitational pull    (former '365 days of 221Bs' series) [357]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Banter, Epic Friendship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Lestrade is a saint, Love, M/M, Slash, terms of endearment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarion/pseuds/Anarion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He was never one to use terms of endearments.</i>
</p><p>This is the story of John and Sherlock: A love story told over 365 days. It's not linear. It's not a serial. It's a 221B (almost) every day, building up a cohesive whole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 357 - The way of my people

He was never one to use terms of endearments, especially ridiculous ones like 'sugar-crumpet’, but could live with ‘sweetie’ or ‘darling’. Still, it wasn’t something that he would choose to say.

The girl he finally settled with never asked him to call her anything but her name. And it still didn’t work out.

Now that he is older, he doesn’t have as strong an opinion about it anymore. He calls Molly ‘love’ sometimes and Rose was ‘princess’ since she first grabbed his finger with her tiny hand and looked at him. His son James he calls ‘mate’, though James will tell you that that isn’t a term of endearment (he is sixteen, what do you expect?).

All of this is rather normal for a middle-aged Englishman. No surprises there.

What really might surprise you though, is that he has one for Sherlock. Yes, I’m still talking about endearments.

It was more of an accident in the beginning: Sherlock barged into his bedroom (Lestrade never wanted to know how he got into his flat in the first place) with an excited look on his face, shouting, “Case, Lestrade!” 

Greg (having had no more than 5 hours of sleep) opened one eye, looked at a 6 feet tall three-year-old almost bouncing with excitement and closed his eye again with a grown.

Then said 6 feet tall three-year-old grabbed his blanket and dared to yank it away. “Come on! You slept 4.3 hours, that has to be enough. Get up! We have a triple homicide!”

Lestrade held on to his blanket with all his might and sighed, “Yes, all right, sunshine. Calm down.”

 

Then he realised what he’d just said, but for some reason Sherlock didn’t complain, he only blinked at Lestrade with a somewhat surprised look on his face. Maybe he felt that there was no malice behind it, only fondness and friendship (and a severe lack of sleep).

They solved the triple homicide in two days and never spoke about the scene in Lestrade’s bedroom again. But when Greg called Sherlock ‘sunshine’ again during a particularly stressful case a couple of weeks later, he was sure that he saw the hint of a smile on the detective’s face.

There definitely was a smile on John’s face when he first heard it. 

He marveled at the fact that for some reason that alone, that one word spoken with fond exasperation in the middle of a chaotic crime scene, seemed to calm Sherlock down, to anchor him enough to share his observations without disappearing in his own head. That was the moment John realised that Greg Lestrade was - in his own way - absolutely brilliant.

**Author's Note:**

> Two times 221 words this time. The prompts were 'sunshine' (by Verity Burns) & 'fashion'.


End file.
